Ghosts
by QuoteMyFoot
Summary: Conrad's delighted to see his sister again. Only she isn't the sister he remembers. Oneshot.


Conrad used to have nightmares about smoke for years afterwards – not the fire, just smoke. It was the smoke that burned his eyes and made him weep, and it was the smoke, hanging in the air like a stormcloud, that he turned to see when the maid said that Anthiese was dead. He would dream that she was with him sometimes, that she had come with him out of the villa. But then he would try to take her hand, and she would dissolve into a smoke herself, leaving only the echoing demand, _why did you leave me?_

Sometimes, Conrad thinks he should have stayed. His mother, Lady Liprica, and Anthiese were the only good things in his life. Wouldn't it have been better to end with them, instead of going on meaninglessly? But Lord Duma wishes for his children to have the strength to stand by themselves, without the strength of others, or that was what Sage Halcyon said.

It seems to take all of Conrad's strength just to exist.

Anthiese had always seemed really special to him. Although she was four years younger, she was the one who protected him from the taunts of their other half siblings. She even defied their father, on the few occasions he actually visited his children, sticking her chin up and ordering him not to be mean to Conrad. King Lima would only laugh and pat her head, and go on saying what he liked about Conrad. It still mattered a lot to Conrad that Anthiese _tried._

She held his hand through ghost stories, telling him to be brave, promising to protect him from spirits and terrors. Now he feels a chill whenever he sees a glimpse of red hair.

 _Why did Anthiese have to die?_

Sage Halcyon said the world wasn't always kind. Sage Halcyon said the important thing now was to carry on like Anthiese would have wanted.

So Conrad goes on existing, getting stronger. _What Anthiese would have wanted._ He doesn't really know, not really. She was a child, she was kind, she wanted the world to be a happier place. Childish dreams. What would she have done, as an adult, as a Princess, to make that dream a reality? Conrad doesn't know, and trying to imagine what she would have wanted feels like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands.

But he has nothing else, so he keeps trying.

* * *

Then, a miracle. Princess Anthiese lives. His sister still lives.

Except. Except she calls herself Celica. Conrad thought 'Celica' was a mask like his, to better conceal herself. He soon comes to realise that the mask is 'Anthiese', and Celica is the person beneath. Whilst Conrad has been existing, training for a nebulous purpose that not even he could place, _Celica_ has been living. She laughs with her friends from Novis, she gently teases her bodyguard, shares a kind word with the knight who lost his family, and still looks back fondly on a small village where she lived for only a month, but where she met someone who would forever change her life.

When he calls her 'Anthiese', there is always a slight pause before she answers, as though she thinks he is talking to someone else. When he talks to her of their childhood, memories which were so precious to him because they were all he had left of her, she looks away and ducks her head, uncomfortable.

It's wrong to feel jealous, that Anthiese has still had so much good in her life. But it is hard not to be bitter that he can't even call his sister by name without being reminded of how little regard she has for the best years of Conrad's life.

Eventually, she has to accept the name 'Anthiese' again. It makes her miserable to be this person, but Conrad gets a small thrill out of it nonetheless, because she finally feels something like the person he remembers. The young princess, conscious of her duty to her kingdom - all the more aware because, even as children, they could see how little Lima cared for kingship. Everyone else teased Conrad because he had little protection from it; his mother, a bargaining chip that Lima had quickly grown bored of, had only Lady Liprica to defend her and her son. Anthiese was outraged that their father would use anyone like a _thing,_ a toy, to amuse him.

He can see in her now, as he did then, that feeling that she has to be something greater, better than Lima. A shield for all of Zofia.

He can be Princess Anthiese's spear. He can be her knight in armour, loyal and strong, tireless and watchful.

He just doesn't know if he can be Celica's brother. Sometimes, she will sit with him and reminisce about their childhood, but it feels like a concession from her - something she only does for Conrad's sake, spending a little piece of herself on each painful, poorly-remembered story. She does not confess her fears to him or tell him of her joys. He only knows she feels 'Anthiese' is a burden because he has nothing else to do than to watch over her, not because she allows him to see her real feelings.

When Conrad begs her not to throw her life away needlessly, he feels like he's talking to a ghost. A ghost of a sister, who died a long time ago. No. A sister who lived a long time ago, and grew and changed, while Conrad has spent time carving his memories of her into his soul, until he has shaped himself for a person who no longer exists.

Maybe _he_ is the ghost. Everything of his life has been done with smoke and mirrors - the secret escape from the villa, hiding away in the hamlet, even appearing before _Celica_ as a masked stranger. It has all the makings of a triumphant revival for the royal family and Zofia itself. But Conrad feels the furthest from 'family' they've ever been, and he doesn't know how he could bring himself to love Zofia, when sometimes he can't even love this stranger of a sister.

But... he recalls how Anthiese laughed when he played the dashing knight. There wasn't anything dutiful about her joy then - as though, for once, it was Celica with Conrad, not the Crown Princess. If wearing the mask is what it takes to get a sister back, even for a while, he can live with that.

Maybe one day he'll have the family he missed. But for now, Celica has to be enough.

She's all he has.

* * *

 **A/N:** From a prompt on the Fire Emblem subreddit. This is, uh, probably a little more angst than is really justified by canon but... it was fun to write? Anyway, I'd love to hear any feedback you have.


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